[ Zhurnal evoliutsionnoi biokhimii i fiziologii Pub Date : 2015-01-01 P D Bregestowski

Abstract

The most widely accepted modern scenario of prebiotic evolution that led to the emergence of the first cells on our planet is the "RNA World"--a hypothetical period of the early Earth's biosphere, when the information transfer and all the processes necessary for the functioning of the primary systems were provided by replicating RNA molecules. The essence of the "RNA World" hypothesis is based on two postulates: 1) at the initial stages of the origin of life, RNA molecules performed all functions necessary for reproduction and replication of biological molecules: informational, catalytic and structural; 2) at a certain stage of evolution arose separation of RNA and DNA, appeared genetically encoded proteins and occurred a transition to the modern world of living systems functioning. However, the analysis shows that the hypothesis of "RNA World" has a number of unsurmountable problems of chemical and informational nature. The biggest of them are: a) the unreliability of the initial components synthesis; b) a catastrophic rise of polynucleotide chains instability with their elongation; c) catastrophically low probability of formation of sequences possessing meaningful information; d) lack of a mechanism determining the regularities division of the membrane vesicles permeable to nitrogen bases and other RNA components; e) lack of driving forces for the transition from the RNA world to the much more complex world based on DNA and RNA. Therefore, the "RNA World" scenario seems unlikely.